“Preparatory to Terrorism?”
Could someone define exactly what the above term means?
Sorry folks, hitting you with a political rant after a long hiatus, but I am getting beyond the “freaked out” stage with this whole scaremongering thing.
Call me paranoid, but when Westminster loonies start talking about “security measures” that sound just a tad on the totalitarian side, I get worried.
For those lucky enough not to know (pardon me as I intrude on your world) or not to be affected (lucky gits), our British nutjobs are going USA! Spread panic! ID cards! British FBI! (Anyone who doesn’t get a sense of “ominous doom” at the latter is either exceptionally brave or doesn’t know what happens with “made in UK” operations). If you must copy America, copy the good things. Like anime distribution and shops that sell unicorn figurines. (Doesn’t take much to make me happy, does it?)
ID cards plain scare me. A forgetful person at the best of times, I know for a fact the day I forget to put the thing in my purse will be the day a bored officer decides to get his kicks by telling me to prove that I’m British. (Which I strongly resent anyway- I’m Scottish, dontcha know). And I wouldn’t trust a politician with my favourite colour, let alone my biometric stats. I rather like my privacy; as long as I’m not doing anything wrong, what business is it of theirs where I am and what I’m doing? I thought electronic tagging was only for criminals?
As for this “terror court” fiasco (sans juries, by the way), you’ll pardon me if I point it there’s something a little bit…dare I say it? undemocratic about the whole business. Innocent ‘til proven guilty, right to be tried by your peers, all that sort of thing. Minor niggles. Yes, terrorists should be caught and dealt with. No-one has the right to take a life, especially a wholly innocent one. Yes, I would hunt done any bastard who dared to hurt me or mine. But I wouldn’t harm or penalize the innocent while I was at it. And you can bet there will be innocent casualties; look at all the “terror arrests” recently. How many have been proven to be actual threats? How many do the police have reasonable grounds for detaining? We’ve never been told.
More fun with the police…like everything being an arrestable offence. That worries me as well. We’ve already lost the right to remain silent, now the police will be allowed to sneakily take our fingerprints (with neither consent nor prior knowledge). Doesn’t do much for all the PR the police are doing right now
This is really problematic on two levels. First, there’s the whole “bully boy” tactics thing. Then there’s the fact that it’s no longer a case of “if you haven’t done anything wrong, there’s nothing to fear.” If they think you might have done it, not “know,” not “can prove,” - you’re in hot water. It’s like the paranoia in schools now, where a teacher can’t even defend themselves if attacked, for fear of assault accusations. If the kid says you did it, your career’s over, doesn’t matter whether you did or not. Not only does this affect wrongly accused teachers, it undermines kids who are telling the truth. No innocent party wins, the bad guys get away.
And then there’s this “preparatory to terrorism” thing…What’s that? Is that something logical (like finding explosives and blueprints in somebody’s garage) or we’re-the-government-and-we’re-gonna-keep-it-that-way type tactics (ie, locking me up for expressing my views here…what’s that? Oh, it’s just “Freedom of Speech” flying out the window)?
And if you think I’m exaggerating, look at that poor LJer who ended up with the FBI on their doorstep for daring to blaspheme the holy name of Bush. Er, did that sounded vaguely wrong..?
These steps are not “security measures.” They are “government control” measures. They are scare tactics, and quite frankly seem aimed at making the government, the police and various other authorities infallible. I bet getting compensation for wrongful arrest and imprisonment is going to be near nigh impossible after this. As if it wasn’t difficult enough - two guys imprisoned for years got their compensation drastically reduced on either some obscure technicality...or because they were charged for room and board. In a prison. Admittedly, some might argue that they are willing to compromise freedom for security (can’t say I agree - yes, security is good, but so is freedom) but then again I’ll bet the majority of the (non-criminal) population would fall foul of these measures at some point, whether it’s having your ID demanded of you in the street or losing your civil liberties to government policy. And that “security” that you sacrificed so much for won’t seem like much cop either - a bit of plastic card is not going to stop terrorism.
Worse, we have a general election coming up that everyone regards much as they did the USA election - hoping things will improve, but knowing they won’t. Labour aren’t doing their job - who do we turn to? The Conservative party? That’s a laugh - we’re still feeling the after affects of Thatcher. Lib Dems? Might be an idea; if nothing else they’ll be too stunned at winning something to do anything for the first year or so. Might give us a bit of breathing space. Minority parties? Do we even know what they’re called? And even if we do, does anyone else?
So much choice…but they all lead to pretty much the same conclusion: We’re screwed.
None of this is democracy. Nor are restrictive measures against peaceful protest (such as Huntington Life Sciences suing a woman for thousands for…wait for it…sitting on their fence),* “concern” about large public gatherings, and removal of freedom of speech/freedom of the press. Without those, no democracy. Without those, continuing Western presence in Iraq (not to mention a war that cost people on both sides - and innocent bystanders- their lives) is even less justified than it already is. And that’s quite an achievement.
*(On a side note, do they think we don’t realize that this will punish peaceful protestors while the nutcases carry on doing what their doing? Credit us with a little more observance).
You want to defend democracy? Then practice democracy. That means “equality, justice and freedom for all” (in theory, anyway). Oh, and one other thing (Blair and Blunkett take note): We’re the people. We elect you. We are your bosses. You do as we say.
Not the other way around.
On a completely unrelated note: What is with the pop up ads? I’m getting pop ups on Quizilla and other generic sites that really should not be on general access sites (As if the “CHOOZ UR OWN HRY PTTR ROMANSE! crap in “new quizzes” isn’t enough). Aren’t there restrictions on what pop-ups can be used on a site?
With that unpleasantness out of the way, let there be quizzes.
You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.
What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
J:
Your Beauty lies
in Dreams. Day-dreamer, creative and forever lost
in thoughts. You're a
dreamer, wanting more in your life than you have
now. Though you a lot of your
dreams never seem to leave your own mind. You've
created your own little world
inside that head of yours and you're most beautiful
when your mind is in
the clouds with sparkles in your eyes. You'd rather
be asleep than awake and
people find it hard to have long conversations with
you as you mind often
wanders and you aren't a big fan of reality. You
are long and almost child-like
probably with a great love for Fantasy or Science
Fiction. You're very creative
and most likely love to write wonderful stories or
draw and even sing, anything
creative that you can use that vast imagination of
yours. You're a bit of a
puzzle to people love to wonder as to what is going
in your mind.
Some Things
That Represent You:
Element:
Water, Wind Animal: Eagle Color:
Purples, Blues,
Pinks, Misty Colors Song: Imaginary by
Evanescence Expression: Blank Stare
Gemstone:
Rose Quartz Mythological Creature: Unicorn,
Fairy Sign:
Cancer Planet: Saturn Hair Color:
Strawberry
Blonde Eye Color: Violet
Quote:
"I lie inside myself for hours and watch my
purple skies fly over me."
Where Does Your Beauty Lie? ..::Original Pictures Are Back! Detailed Results::..
brought to you by Quizilla
You are Sakaki-san! I want to meet you. In fact,
everyone does. You're the coolest person out
there. You are just inherently cool. But...
you wish you weren't. You'd give it all up for
being cute. Really really cute. You become
obsessed by things and focus on them 100% of
the time... and never with any results. You
get easily embarrased and are very shy. You
rarely feel comfortable in your own body. You
try to protect your friends, and you always win
whatever you do... without even trying. You'd
like to be good with animals, but they ussually
just use you... and sometimes abuse you. But
they are the most important things in the
world, along with cuteness and emotions. You
tend to try to hide your inner shyness with a
mask of indifference, but really, there's
nothing to hide. You are just really cool.
Your best friend would be a Kagura, and you
should defenitely go into whatever field suits
you best. You are good at everything, so just
do what you love doing!
The Azumanga Daioh Character Quiz
brought to you by Quizilla
Sorry folks, hitting you with a political rant after a long hiatus, but I am getting beyond the “freaked out” stage with this whole scaremongering thing.
Call me paranoid, but when Westminster loonies start talking about “security measures” that sound just a tad on the totalitarian side, I get worried.
For those lucky enough not to know (pardon me as I intrude on your world) or not to be affected (lucky gits), our British nutjobs are going USA! Spread panic! ID cards! British FBI! (Anyone who doesn’t get a sense of “ominous doom” at the latter is either exceptionally brave or doesn’t know what happens with “made in UK” operations). If you must copy America, copy the good things. Like anime distribution and shops that sell unicorn figurines. (Doesn’t take much to make me happy, does it?)
ID cards plain scare me. A forgetful person at the best of times, I know for a fact the day I forget to put the thing in my purse will be the day a bored officer decides to get his kicks by telling me to prove that I’m British. (Which I strongly resent anyway- I’m Scottish, dontcha know). And I wouldn’t trust a politician with my favourite colour, let alone my biometric stats. I rather like my privacy; as long as I’m not doing anything wrong, what business is it of theirs where I am and what I’m doing? I thought electronic tagging was only for criminals?
As for this “terror court” fiasco (sans juries, by the way), you’ll pardon me if I point it there’s something a little bit…dare I say it? undemocratic about the whole business. Innocent ‘til proven guilty, right to be tried by your peers, all that sort of thing. Minor niggles. Yes, terrorists should be caught and dealt with. No-one has the right to take a life, especially a wholly innocent one. Yes, I would hunt done any bastard who dared to hurt me or mine. But I wouldn’t harm or penalize the innocent while I was at it. And you can bet there will be innocent casualties; look at all the “terror arrests” recently. How many have been proven to be actual threats? How many do the police have reasonable grounds for detaining? We’ve never been told.
More fun with the police…like everything being an arrestable offence. That worries me as well. We’ve already lost the right to remain silent, now the police will be allowed to sneakily take our fingerprints (with neither consent nor prior knowledge). Doesn’t do much for all the PR the police are doing right now
This is really problematic on two levels. First, there’s the whole “bully boy” tactics thing. Then there’s the fact that it’s no longer a case of “if you haven’t done anything wrong, there’s nothing to fear.” If they think you might have done it, not “know,” not “can prove,” - you’re in hot water. It’s like the paranoia in schools now, where a teacher can’t even defend themselves if attacked, for fear of assault accusations. If the kid says you did it, your career’s over, doesn’t matter whether you did or not. Not only does this affect wrongly accused teachers, it undermines kids who are telling the truth. No innocent party wins, the bad guys get away.
And then there’s this “preparatory to terrorism” thing…What’s that? Is that something logical (like finding explosives and blueprints in somebody’s garage) or we’re-the-government-and-we’re-gonna-keep-it-that-way type tactics (ie, locking me up for expressing my views here…what’s that? Oh, it’s just “Freedom of Speech” flying out the window)?
And if you think I’m exaggerating, look at that poor LJer who ended up with the FBI on their doorstep for daring to blaspheme the holy name of Bush. Er, did that sounded vaguely wrong..?
These steps are not “security measures.” They are “government control” measures. They are scare tactics, and quite frankly seem aimed at making the government, the police and various other authorities infallible. I bet getting compensation for wrongful arrest and imprisonment is going to be near nigh impossible after this. As if it wasn’t difficult enough - two guys imprisoned for years got their compensation drastically reduced on either some obscure technicality...or because they were charged for room and board. In a prison. Admittedly, some might argue that they are willing to compromise freedom for security (can’t say I agree - yes, security is good, but so is freedom) but then again I’ll bet the majority of the (non-criminal) population would fall foul of these measures at some point, whether it’s having your ID demanded of you in the street or losing your civil liberties to government policy. And that “security” that you sacrificed so much for won’t seem like much cop either - a bit of plastic card is not going to stop terrorism.
Worse, we have a general election coming up that everyone regards much as they did the USA election - hoping things will improve, but knowing they won’t. Labour aren’t doing their job - who do we turn to? The Conservative party? That’s a laugh - we’re still feeling the after affects of Thatcher. Lib Dems? Might be an idea; if nothing else they’ll be too stunned at winning something to do anything for the first year or so. Might give us a bit of breathing space. Minority parties? Do we even know what they’re called? And even if we do, does anyone else?
So much choice…but they all lead to pretty much the same conclusion: We’re screwed.
None of this is democracy. Nor are restrictive measures against peaceful protest (such as Huntington Life Sciences suing a woman for thousands for…wait for it…sitting on their fence),* “concern” about large public gatherings, and removal of freedom of speech/freedom of the press. Without those, no democracy. Without those, continuing Western presence in Iraq (not to mention a war that cost people on both sides - and innocent bystanders- their lives) is even less justified than it already is. And that’s quite an achievement.
*(On a side note, do they think we don’t realize that this will punish peaceful protestors while the nutcases carry on doing what their doing? Credit us with a little more observance).
You want to defend democracy? Then practice democracy. That means “equality, justice and freedom for all” (in theory, anyway). Oh, and one other thing (Blair and Blunkett take note): We’re the people. We elect you. We are your bosses. You do as we say.
Not the other way around.
On a completely unrelated note: What is with the pop up ads? I’m getting pop ups on Quizilla and other generic sites that really should not be on general access sites (As if the “CHOOZ UR OWN HRY PTTR ROMANSE! crap in “new quizzes” isn’t enough). Aren’t there restrictions on what pop-ups can be used on a site?
With that unpleasantness out of the way, let there be quizzes.
You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.
What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
J:
Your Beauty lies
in Dreams. Day-dreamer, creative and forever lost
in thoughts. You're a
dreamer, wanting more in your life than you have
now. Though you a lot of your
dreams never seem to leave your own mind. You've
created your own little world
inside that head of yours and you're most beautiful
when your mind is in
the clouds with sparkles in your eyes. You'd rather
be asleep than awake and
people find it hard to have long conversations with
you as you mind often
wanders and you aren't a big fan of reality. You
are long and almost child-like
probably with a great love for Fantasy or Science
Fiction. You're very creative
and most likely love to write wonderful stories or
draw and even sing, anything
creative that you can use that vast imagination of
yours. You're a bit of a
puzzle to people love to wonder as to what is going
in your mind.
Some Things
That Represent You:
Element:
Water, Wind Animal: Eagle Color:
Purples, Blues,
Pinks, Misty Colors Song: Imaginary by
Evanescence Expression: Blank Stare
Gemstone:
Rose Quartz Mythological Creature: Unicorn,
Fairy Sign:
Cancer Planet: Saturn Hair Color:
Strawberry
Blonde Eye Color: Violet
Quote:
"I lie inside myself for hours and watch my
purple skies fly over me."
Where Does Your Beauty Lie? ..::Original Pictures Are Back! Detailed Results::..
brought to you by Quizilla
You are Sakaki-san! I want to meet you. In fact,
everyone does. You're the coolest person out
there. You are just inherently cool. But...
you wish you weren't. You'd give it all up for
being cute. Really really cute. You become
obsessed by things and focus on them 100% of
the time... and never with any results. You
get easily embarrased and are very shy. You
rarely feel comfortable in your own body. You
try to protect your friends, and you always win
whatever you do... without even trying. You'd
like to be good with animals, but they ussually
just use you... and sometimes abuse you. But
they are the most important things in the
world, along with cuteness and emotions. You
tend to try to hide your inner shyness with a
mask of indifference, but really, there's
nothing to hide. You are just really cool.
Your best friend would be a Kagura, and you
should defenitely go into whatever field suits
you best. You are good at everything, so just
do what you love doing!
The Azumanga Daioh Character Quiz
brought to you by Quizilla